Covert Kill: A David Rivers Thriller

Ian let that statement fade to silence before he replied.

“The world exists in shades of gray—you of all people know that.”

“Yes.”

Ian swallowed. “The guy we were after, Usman Mokhammed, well…he works in the black. If we handed that ISWAP guy over to the villagers, the odds were they’d kill him themselves, and face worse recriminations than they already would. And if we took him captive, we wouldn’t have been able to continue our mission. It could have meant Usman remained alive.”

Tolu objected, “You cannot know that. Only God knows.”

“You’re right,” Ian said, tossing his stick aside in frustration. “I can’t give you any hard evidence, but I can tell you this—that ISWAP foot soldier had definitely killed a few people in his day. Maybe five, maybe a dozen. Do you agree?”

“Sure. Yes.”

“Well, Usman was responsible for hundreds of deaths, and he would have been able to achieve a thousand or more if his promotion in Boko Haram continued. Most of them would have been innocent civilians. That guy David executed was raiding a village, yeah. But Usman would have been the one ordering the raids, expanding their efforts to”—he hesitated a moment—“to recruit more young men like your brother. And believe me, Usman was one hell of a lot smarter than the people who will be taking his place now that he’s gone.”

Ian saw an object fly through the periphery of his vision, looking left to see the crushed stump of Tolu’s cigar landing. The driver rose, circling the tree to face Ian.

Then he extended his hand, a peaceful expression on his face as Ian returned the handshake. Tolu released his grip, nodding as he looked toward the safehouse.

“Thank you, brother.”

He left before Ian could reply, his footsteps whispering across the ground. A few moments later, Ian heard the safehouse door swing open and click shut.

Ian didn’t move at first, wondering whether his assurance had helped Tolu understand the dire ramifications of his participation in the mission, or if the driver had simply given him lip service to end the conversation.

Pushing himself upright, Ian brushed the dirt from his pants and approached the safehouse, crossing back into the sunlight before turning the scalding door handle.

He locked the door behind him, fully expecting to hear the same bustle of activity that had been occurring all day so far as the team packed all but the most essential equipment in preparation for departing Nigeria that night.

Instead, the safehouse was eerily silent, which could have only one explanation: something major had just happened.

He strode quickly toward the operations center, hearing David speak two words as he reached the halfway point in the hallway.

“Get Ian.”

“I’m here,” he replied, entering the room to see his entire team clustered around the desk.

David and Cancer were seated, while Reilly and Worthy stood to either side of their team leadership, but all eyes were focused on the radio speaker box atop the desk, which emitted a crackling burst of static at the start of a radio transmission that, judging by appearances, wasn’t the first.

A man said in a thick New York accent, “Suicide Actual, come in.”

Ian looked at David and asked, “Why aren't you answering?”

“Because it’s not SATCOM,” the team leader replied. “This is coming in over our encrypted team net.”

That comment gave Ian pause, bringing to mind a series of complicating factors—namely, no one knew their team frequency except Duchess and her people. And merely possessing the frequency wasn’t enough to communicate over it; the caller would need the encrypted radio key just to transmit, and that was a highly protected code that changed with each mission. Even if an outside party had both the frequency and the radio key, this was an FM net. That meant whoever was calling them was located in Abuja, and judging by the clarity of his transmissions, probably within a mile of the safehouse.

The voice repeated, “Suicide Actual, come in.”

David was watching Ian, searching for some guidance on how to react to this highly unusual development.

Ian grabbed a legal pad off the desk, flipping to a clean page and snatching a pen as he said, “Don’t answer. Let’s see what he has to say.”

Cancer asked, “What if he won’t transmit in the blind?”

“He will,” Ian said, “at least if this is what I think it is.”

Reilly squinted at him. “What do you think it is?”

Ian blinked, swallowing hard as he considered his response.

“Duchess has gone full gangster.”

Over the speaker box, the New Yorker continued, “All right, in the blind it is. This is a friend of Duchess. I know believing that is a tall order, so here’s some bona fides: her callsign is Raptor Nine One, and your team’s radio handles are Suicide, Cancer, Angel, Doc, and Racegun. I’m relaying a prepared message that’s too hot for SATCOM, so get ready to copy.”

Ian had his pen poised on the notepad, and he scrawled quick bullet points as the man continued, “News broke on the Gradsek conspiracy, and it spooked the most critical source of future intelligence: Chukwuma Ndatsu Malu, the politician we’ve linked to Gradsek and Boko Haram. Malu expects he’ll be whacked by Erik Weisz for failing to keep the wheels on their arrangement, and to keep him from compromising Weisz’s syndicate. So he’s fleeing the country in two and a half hours, via a private plane out of Abuja. He takes off on that, and no one’s gonna see him again except Weisz’s people when they put a bullet in his head.”

A lump formed in Ian’s throat as he recognized that the message’s authenticity was beyond reproach—the name Erik Weisz was known to very few people, and the true import of that pseudonym to even fewer. Ian readied the tip of his pen for the next transmission, watching the speaker box as the man continued.

“Now here’s the most important part: Malu is holed up at his personal residence, address is 116 Buhari Street in Abuja. He’s getting picked up there at 1600 local by a Gradsek security contingent that’s gonna take him to the airport. They’ve tasked an armed three-man detail plus a driver, and they’ll be arriving in a Mercedes G-Class SUV with a ballistic protection level of B5, rated up to 7.62mm. If you’re willing and able to roll up Malu, Duchess believes he’s got significant information leading back to Erik Weisz. Anything you obtain needs to be attributed to site exploitation from earlier in the mission. You found a cell phone in Lagos or Maiduguri that you forgot to report, or maybe a terrorist from your Gwoza ambushes spontaneously confessed before he expired. Tailor your story to the information obtained, but keep it reasonable so Duchess can cover for you.”

Ian jotted the word story and underlined it twice, his mind already spinning with the possibilities of intelligence attribution—which, depending on what they acquired, could be more complicated than anyone expected.

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